When recently talking with Jack Darrell, owner and CEO of the Micro Wrestling Federation (MWF) out of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, I asked him if any of his wrestlers would be available to chat about the promotion. Darrell didn’t hesitate, telling me Jacob Brooks, aka Lil Show, was “the guy.”
Having seen the MWF’s Discovery Channel series, Big Little Brawlers, I knew precisely why Brooks was seen as the frontman for the roster. Sure, he was a veteran talent with a large fan following, but mainly, it was because he was the one who was good in the locker room with the rest of his peers.
Think of The Undertaker in the WWE, and you’ll get an idea of who Brooks is for MWF.
“I watched The Undertaker’s documentary, and you don’t really see him a lot, but he’s in the background, and a lot of people have respect for him,” said Brooks. “He’s been there since the beginning, and he helped a lot of guys in the back. And I think that’s what I do. I’ve been there from the beginning.”
Brooks, a Mississippi native who now makes his home in Denver with his wife and kids, was actually there before the beginning, showing up for a Jerry “The King” Lawler show in Memphis as a 13-year-old who ultimately got paid with pizza and a handshake. But he was hooked. And from a young age, he surrounded himself with seasoned pros who didn’t just teach him the nuts and bolts of what happened in the ring but in the business.
“I was green when I first started out,” he said. “I was 13, and then I got my license at 16, and I started wrestling at these high schools every weekend on the indie circuit. And then when I graduated high school, I went to a company, and I was wrestling four or five times a week. And I met a lot of the old guys. I learned a lot of stuff from Nasty Boy and just seeing how people looked up to him. He would tell us stories and stuff like that. Plus, I was trained by Pat Tanaka, who told me a lot of stories about the locker room. And I don’t mind being a leader, but I always want to help people. I feel like, yeah, I can go out there, and I can just beat the crap out of my opponent or whatever, but if I have a guy in there where we can make some chemistry and we can make magic in there, then that’s what you want. Because, at the end of the day, I feel it’s a dance. It’s not just one person in there. We’re in there together, and we’re trying to make each other look good.”
It started there for Brooks, just like it did for countless wrestlers since the dawn of sports entertainment. But here’s the catch when it comes to Lil Show: He’s four-foot-four and competing in an area of the sport that used to be called midget wrestling. Today, it’s micro wrestling, but the prejudices and issues the wrestlers of the MWF must face haven’t changed.
“Obviously, if you think of Micro, we have a lot of fans, but there are a couple people there who are coming there to laugh,” said Brooks. “They think it’s going to be a sideshow. And that’s another reason why we’re out here training, and we bust our butts every night because we all have a chip on our shoulder; all of us. We want to prove to the world, to whoever’s there, that hey, we can do anything that the big guys can do. And sometimes better. We just do it differently. I mean, heck, you got Hot Rod doing a Shooting Star Press. You got Jamaican Joe going crazy. You got Heavy Metal Mario; he’s doing all this crazy stuff. They’re all very athletic, and the show is great. And for the people who say that we are getting exploited, there’s nobody putting a gun to our head and telling us, ‘Hey, do this.’ This is how we put food on the table. This is how we take care of our families and pay our bills. And we’re all very blessed so that we get to go out and make a living that we absolutely love what we’re doing.”
See, Brooks puts over his roster mates before even thinking of praising himself. That’s why he’s “the guy” for MWF. And while being on the road for most of the year helps get the word out, when Big Little Brawlers hit the airwaves, everyone got in on one of the best stories in sports entertainment. And in the process, Brooks got a little taste of celebrity life. “I do get recognized a lot more now,” he said. “Our crowds are getting a lot bigger, too, because of the reality show. And I think it’s cool that people get to know the behind-the-scenes stories and know how much blood, sweat, and tears that we all have put into this company and this business that we love so much.”
You can hear it in the 34-year-old’s voice that he loves the game as much as he did when he first got a taste of it back in Memphis. That shows on match night, and it shows in the locker room. And even though he’s still hungry for more, he does appreciate where he’s at and how far he’s come over the last two decades.
“I never thought I would ever get here,” he said. “And I know that we’ve been trying to get the reality show going for years, and finally, everything fell into place, and it was just like everything was working out for the best. All the surgeries and the blood, sweat, and tears all paid off. I think I like it (the reality show) because people can hear the story. Each one of us has our own story, and I think that’s how we get connected with our fans. It’s through the stories. We never gave up. Anything’s possible. You just got to work hard and believe, have faith and anything can happen.”
As for being the locker room leader, MWF’s Undertaker, he again refuses to take that title. He’s just happy to help his teammates navigate a tough business because that’s what his mentors did for him.
“Anytime I can help anybody to get better, if they’ll listen, then that’s awesome,” Brooks said. “There’s a lot of guys out there that I helped train, and they come up and say, ‘Yeah, Show, you taught me a lot.’ That means so much to me. I remember when I used to tell Pat and my dad and all these other guys, ‘Hey, thanks for teaching me this.’ And now I’m teaching these guys, and I still feel like I’m in my prime. It’s just a respect thing for me. And I just love the business so much. This business gave me everything. I met my wife through this business. I have my family through this business. If I wasn’t wrestling, I don’t know what I’d be doing.”
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